- ‘There’s no way APC’ll defeat ADC in a free, fair election’
Bolaji Abdullahi is the National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). In this interview, he speaks on the worsening security and economic situation in the country, as well as the ADC’s proposed solutions to these challenges, among other issues, EVINCE UHUREBOR reports
How do you react to the national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which the ruling party has said other parties like yours actually need to learn from in terms of organisation, in terms of reaching consensus on issues and ensuring that conventions are held within a healthy atmosphere?
Watching the APC convention and listening to the President, of course, one naturally expects members of the APC to continue to celebrate their convention in superlative terms and to award themselves medals even though they are competing against themselves. You shouldn’t expect any dissent because you have President Bola Tinubu who decides who gets what within the party.
I listened to the House of Representatives speaker begging President Tinubu to allow them to come back and I felt sorry for them. So, what that means is that the mandate of the House of elected representatives of the people is no longer renewable by the people. They no longer need the people that they were supposed to represent to decide whether they have served them well and they deserve to go back now.
They need President Tinubu sitting in Abuja to decide who among them will get the ticket and who will not. And talking about us learning something from what they are doing; if you take power out of APC, the party is actually nothing. I know that party very well. And post-Tinubu, they will unravel so quickly that even they will be surprised.
Are you saying that there’s nothing to learn because it’s the glue of power that is holding them together?
Ask an average APC official, party leader, House of Representatives member about what does APC really stand for. They don’t know because it’s really nothing. So, it’s a special purpose vehicle designed to make the late Muhammadu Buhari president, and the other person, President Tinubu. So, one thing that is clear to us is that in any free and fair election in this country today, there’s no way APC will win. I will ask you a question.
How can a party that has 31 governors at the moment and almost over 90 per cent of the National Assembly still panicking? Why are they still trying to destabilize other opposition parties? I mean, they should be preparing for the coronation of President Tinubu given their overwhelming dominance. But you can see they are unsettled because they know that in a free and fair election, there’s no way they can win. Nigerians are tired of them.
It is very clear that the APC-led Federal Government has failed and Nigerians can’t wait to see its back
And that is why for us in the opposition party, we are very clear what our responsibilities are – to prove to Nigerians that we truly offer alternatives and represent alternatives. The jury has settled on APC’s performance and it is very clear they have failed, and Nigerians can’t wait to see the back of them.
Did you hear all the testimonies at the convention by party members in government, who said in electricity we’ve done this, in agriculture we’ve done this, in youth development we’ve done this, and all of that. Are you telling Nigerians that those boasts were mere talks?
I’ll give you a quick example. As I speak to you, Aso Rock Villa has been taken out of the national grid. Which president takes his accommodation out of the national grid and throws the rest of the country into darkness? I mean, they can continue to lie to themselves, they can continue to deceive themselves. But I sometimes feel sorry sometimes for President Tinubu. Maybe, he’s not really getting the real picture of what is going on and that’s why he keeps saying things are getting better, when they are actually getting worse.
I’ll give you another example. Before President Tinubu came in May 2023, Nigeria ranked seventh in the global terrorism index. The last one released about two weeks ago, Nigeria is now number four. But it’s actually getting worse. And just few days ago, Statisense released another report saying that 735 Nigerians have been killed by insurgents within one month, and that included soldiers.
That is one Nigerian every one hour. It’s the worst insurgency casualty on earth. So, what are they telling us? And you see, if they don’t have the humility to admit that what they are doing is wrong, that it is not working, how can they even begin to solve it? If they are caught in this self-celebration, how do we even hope that when they come back, they will embrace a different approach? That’s why we are saying we can’t continue like this.
What if the President actually says you are misunderstanding some of the things his government is doing?
We are not misunderstanding anything. It is the President that needs to understand that Nigerians are actually suffering, that more Nigerians are suffering today than ever before. These figures I’m giving you were not manufactured by the ADC. These are publicly available data. I’ll also give you another example. The President said we are misunderstanding what they are doing and we don’t understand all that.
Today, as I speak to you, Nigerians don’t even know how they can respond to what the President is saying. The President is making all kinds of claims saying, we have fixed electricity, but a majority of Nigerians are actually suffering more than ever before and the indications are very clear. If you check, you’ll find that between 2024 and 2025, President Tinubu has actually spent N34 billion on official travel, and that’s the same government that released only N36 million to the Ministry of Health capital budget.
Has it ever happened before that in Nigerian history, a government would be implementing three budgets at the same time and would be operating three budgets at the same time and implementing none? Recently, we issued a statement and expressed concerns that the people in government are saying terrorists are prodigal sons and we cannot fight them. How can terrorists be prodigal sons who need rehabilitation?
The other time, the National Security Adviser (NSA) said they are our brothers. These people kill Nigerians, so they ought to be treated as enemies. But this government is cuddling terrorists. They are doing business with terrorists. The last time they kidnapped people in my state, Kwara State, the kidnappers were asking for N1 billion. How did they get the temerity to be asking to be paid for kidnapping Nigerians if the government is not doing business with them?
Let’s talk about the ADC and its manifesto. Many Nigerians are still trying to understand the party. I was listening to a politician the other day and he said ADC is a collision, not a coalition. How do you react to that?
We will hear cynical comments like that but we are not bothered because we are very clear about what we set out to achieve. And we can say with greater degree of clarity where we stand today on some of the key issues that actually matter to Nigerians. It’s the work we have done over the last nine months. You know, when President Tinubu during the Eid Fitri said the war in the Middle East is going to drive inflation, we said Nigerians have been at war since 2023 that he came to power, so we don’t need the war in the Middle East to drive inflation. He declared war on Nigerians. It is very clear to us that the problem of subsidy removal was a mistake.
The way it was done. It shouldn’t have been done, and it is very clear to us that subsidy itself is not the problem. It is the corruption of the subsidy regime that was the problem. The arbitrage associated with it, the smuggling associated with it and all kinds of corrupt practices associated with it. What President Tinubu did in 2023 by removing subsidy the way he did was to punish poor people for the crimes being committed by rich people. ADC is now saying that removal of subsidy for everyone is as bad as giving subsidy to everyone.
We are saying that we will give targeted subsidy to those who need it. We will do a means tested need and we will know those who need subsidy. Every country in the world gives subsidies to the poorest among them. Nigerians are too poor to be abandoned to market forces. What governments do when people are this poor is to protect them and not to throw them to market forces. And how do you protect your citizens? You subsidize the things that matter most to them – food, drugs and energy.
So, ADC is saying we will give subsidy to those who need it because when a few people are stealing and you say the only solution is to shut down the kitchen completely, you are not doing anything. One of the things that has driven up poverty is the blanket removal of subsidy without the social safety net that the people needed to cushion the effect, and you can see the outcome. So, how has it helped? We are still home to the largest number of poor people in the world. So, we are saying that ADC will give subsidy to those who need subsidy.
A lot of work will go into that to ensure that it does not go through. But the cardinal principle of ADC is very clear that we are not going to abandon the people to the market forces. We will protect the poorest among us and we are not going to tax poverty. And if you look at what this government is doing now, if you transfer any money from your bank account, you pay stamp duty on N10,000. I mean people transferring N10,000; why are you taxing them? What they need to do is cut the tax.
The tax is too much. I just gave you a figure that the President has spent N34 billion on travels alone within one year. That money can be channeled to the people. So, there are wastages by the government, but if you remove the wastages, there would be so much you can do. How come we are allocating N36 million to the health sector when a majority of people can’t even afford to buy drugs? Government is spending N34 billion on travels and that is just one.
So, ADC is saying we will protect our people. We will run a government that is efficient and accountable. We know that the biggest challenge we face today is that the people no longer believe what politicians say, sspecially their governments. Many people don’t believe anything the government says but they can look up to ADC and we are very clear about that.
With 31 governors at the moment and almost over 90 per cent of members of the National Assembly, APC should be preparing for the coronation of Tinubu but you can see that they are unsettled Is it the ADC that is promising us Nigerians or it is the manifesto of a specific individual or a potential presidential aspirant that you are talking about?
Recently, we spent the whole night having this conversation that you are talking about, how do we commit to the implementation of these ideas because our manifesto rests on four cardinal principles. One is security and citizens protection, which is the biggest issue today. Number two is affordable cost of living. The third one is skills and job creation and the last one is social justice and the rule of law.
These are the four key cardinal objectives of the ADC and it is very clear. So, we now ask ourselves how do we commit to its implementation and we are having a conversation because of the experience you just outlined.
I will just record when we were drawing up the covenant with Nigerians that we believed those things. We believed Nigeria was on the cusp of change. When we were doing that difficult work, we knew and we prepared everything including budgeting, where the money would come from and how we were going to deliver it and how we were going to calibrate it.
But the fourth thing the government did like you said, they said oh it’s just some overzealous party members. But even though each time the President wanted to go and campaign at that time, they were coming to us and collecting those documents and using them as campaign material and President Buhari actually personally signed them off. But it was easy to repudiate it as the work of some overzealous people.
In this case, you know that the National Chairman of the ADC, Senator David Mark, inaugurated a policy and manifesto committee and one of the key things he said was that ADC will not leave to the discretion of anybody elected on our platform to decide what to do with power. We’re very clear about that. Don’t forget that many of us came from somewhere, so the experience of where we’re coming from is there.
Look at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it has been hollowed out completely. That’s one of the greatest political party Nigeria ever had. But it’s been hollowed out and it’s no longer you know. So, we are saying that something drove us here and for us to begin to rebuild the Nigerian political system for the people to begin to believe again that something good can come out of politics, we have to build a real political party that is ready to deliver something to the people.
